


Typewriter

by bodyelectric (grantairas)



Category: The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5377028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grantairas/pseuds/bodyelectric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patroclus is a writer. Achilles is an actor. The year is 1955.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Through the haze of smoke and din of quiet conversation over clinking glasses, he was there, illuminated by a single incandescent light bulb that threw down a sort of tragic circle of light, creating sharp angled shadows across his face. He looked like a character about to be engraved in the face of myth. They said he was called Achilles.

Patroclus watched him detachedly as he smoked his cigarette. He was vaguely interested, but then again he was always vaguely interested in something. That was what it was to be a writer, or at least he felt that way. He didn’t suspect his experience with this boy would be any different.

But then, he was magnificent-looking. Golden hair swept over hooded eyes, a deep hazel, from where Patroclus was sitting. High cheekbones, skin that gave off a little of the sun itself. He could be the subject of a poem, Patroclus thought. Maybe two. He’d decide later.

Achilles started reading from the paper in his hand. Patroclus wasn’t particularly enamored of poetry readings like this, but it was good for him to hear what came from other typewriters besides his own. The small audience gave a variety of signs of approval and Achilles seemed to bask in it, grinning and even laughing at times. The words themselves weren’t anything: a couple of vulgar jokes and some pedestrian innuendo obviously the product of an overexcited kid with a thesaurus. But the way it was read, the cadence of Achilles’ voice over a muddle of jeers, made Patroclus listen.

He didn’t join the rest in clapping. He put out his cigarette and watched Achilles leave the stage, out of the ring of light.

 

Patroclus pulled his coat tighter as he stepped into the night. He stopped to light a cigarette and turned to where a small group was huddled by a two-door Dodge. One mop of light hair stood out. Patroclus didn’t know why he continued to stand there, why he kept looking, but Achilles looked up and saw him too. He smiled a little as he exhaled a slow stream of smoke.              

“Did you write that poem?” Patroclus asked. He felt emboldened; maybe by the car, the leather jackets, the joint the guys were sharing.

“No.” Achilles shook his head, looking somehow bored and amused at the same time. “It’s a friend’s.”

The others Achilles was with weren’t paying attention to the conversation, probably hadn’t even noticed Patroclus’ presence. He took advantage of this. “A friend’s?”

“Not really.” Achilles leaned back against the brick. That disinterested, smug expression was maddening. “Just some guy I’m fucking.”

His voice was slow and deliberate. Patroclus knew what his face must have looked like then. But Achilles’ friends were still talking. Cars drove by. The world was continuing.

“Oh. I’m - I just asked because… I’m a writer. I mean I write, too.”

Achilles nodded. A more genuine smile was showing now. “I don’t write. I act.”

Patroclus felt that was somehow obvious. And probably that Achilles was waiting for some sort of praise. “Well that’s… you sounded good. I mean, you read well.”

Achilles tilted his head. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Patroclus.”

Achilles seemed to consider this. Then he said, “I’m here every week. You should let me read your work sometime.”

Patroclus did not consider himself one to become easily distracted by things of a carnal nature, but he was acutely aware of Achilles’ eyes flickering over his body. He said, to move on as smoothly as possible, “What I write isn’t quite like what they had back there, I’m afraid.”

“What is it like?”

Patroclus thought he could answer, but he could not. For the first time that night he felt strangely inferior, in front of this boy who looked like a sculpture, who was so confident in some way that Patroclus did not believe he himself could ever be. In a second’s time everything he had ever written was reduced to nothing. Words were nothing. There was only the burn of a pair of green-gold eyes on his. He was not so vaguely interested anymore.

“I don’t know,” he said pathetically.

Achilles offered his brilliant godlike smile. “That’s a good answer.”

Patroclus adjusted the bridge of his black-rimmed glasses and gestured vaguely behind himself. “Well I… I have somewhere to be.”

Achilles nodded. “I’ll see you here next week?”

The entire breadth of an eternal promise seemed to live in that simple question. This boy was intensity incarnate. Patroclus said, “Yes. Next week.”

 

When he returned to his apartment, Patroclus had the indelible feeling that something profound had happened to him. One inconsequential poetry reading had led to this. He laid in his bed and thought. He smoked more cigarettes and pressed his fingernails into his palm the way he did when restless feelings tore through his mind and refused to be imprisoned on paper. He smoked and he thought. Achilles. Next week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked it; descriptions will probably be vague to avoid any glaring historical inaccuracies and chapters will be a bit on the short side because that's just my style i guess. thank you for reading.


	2. Chapter 2

Patroclus made his way across town through the tree-lined streets that he had always been fond of, with brownstones and crisscrossing fire escapes over windows where anything could be happening. A kid getting a birthday present, a mother making a cake, the television set on. It made him nostalgic for the childhood he never had. His life could have been so different, he thought. He wouldn’t need to create if he had something to begin with.

He thought this way until he saw Achilles waiting for him outside the coffee shop. He hated the juvenile feeling of excitement at the fact that Achilles had waited for him. Achilles seemed coolly unaware of it, or at least unbothered by it. It was hard to tell with him. Patroclus was realizing this.

They sat a table towards the back and Achilles drank from some unmarked bottle that had been passed to them from the other side of the room. Patroclus watched with mild fascination the lines of Achilles’ throat moving as he swallowed, until the kid who had taken the stage started speaking. He was loud and brash and Patroclus instantly disliked him. He turned to Achilles.

“What is this supposed to be about?” he whispered.

“His life in the city. Defying expectations,” Achilles whispered back.

Patroclus took a moment to slip a cigarette out of the pack he kept in his front shirt pocket. After he had it lit, he said, not caring so much now if he whispered or not, “It sounds like a fierce attempt to combine every possible euphemism for his penis into a single written work to me.”

Achilles laughed, unexpectedly. It was a beautiful sound. Of course. “Patroclus, what were you expecting? Couplets? An ode to the springtime?”

Patroclus tried to ignore the sudden rush he felt at having his name used so casually. “I’d certainly enjoy that more, I think.”

Achilles laughed again, more softly, and leaned forward to take the cigarette from between Patroclus’ fingers. He said, “Rhyme and meter doesn’t matter anymore. Or have you not been paying attention?”

Patroclus wanted to be irritated, but found he could not. There was something wonderfully intimate about the way they were leaning towards each other, speaking softly, while the smoke diffused around them. He would have believed anything Achilles said to him in that moment. He wanted to.

“Think of it this way,” Achilles continued, still murmuring and looking steadily at Patroclus, “when you feel something, do you stop to think if it’s the right way to feel? Do you correct your every emotion for the sake of neatness? Or do you just experience it, and accept it for what it is?”

In truth, he didn’t know the answer. But he understood the point.

“It’s the same way with writing. With any art. It’s about emotion. And we don’t censor emotion.” Achilles looked proud, like he had delivered that thought to an enthralled audience. His eyes were bright and faraway.

The kid who had been reading was now finished, and the room broke into the usual clamor of approval. Patroclus wouldn’t have known that it wasn’t meant for Achilles. He stared at him through the cloud of smoke from his forgotten cigarette, and he knew then that what Achilles had been speaking about was about more than writing. If writing was about emotion, he had never written, never even read, anything like what he was feeling now.

Rhyme and meter didn’t matter anymore.

They sat through the rest of the evening in relative silence, punctuated occasionally by Achilles’ golden laugh or a shared glance. Patroclus felt his chest light to flame at one point when Achilles’ palm met the back of his hand on the shared table. He ignored the poetry entirely. All he registered was the vibration of voices far away, all background to Achilles and what now existed between them, something that was waiting to be acted upon and yet the waiting made it sweeter. He let himself get lost in thoughts of it. Achilles.

Eventually the small room emptied out and he found himself on the sidewalk outside beside Achilles. The street was quiet and empty besides the backs of figures retreating down the subway steps. Patroclus saw it coming. The hand grabbed at the collar of his shirt and pushed till Patroclus was pressed between the rough brick and the smooth leather of Achilles’ jacket.

“Tell me you haven’t thought about this since the moment you saw me.”

“I never stopped thinking about it,” Patroclus answered.

Achilles kissed him fiercely and Patroclus kissed back, tasting booze and ichor and dead couplets. He let Achilles hold the small of his back and the back of his thigh. He was so in love.

“I thought about it too,” Achilles whispered, pausing to bite Patroclus’ lip one more time. “I thought about it a lot. You in those glasses.”

“You like my glasses?”

That made Achilles laugh. Patroclus felt that he wielded some wonderful power, to be able to make Achilles laugh. He said, “Tell me more.”


	3. Chapter 3

Patroclus attended those poetry readings like church. Every Saturday, a service, where gods were formed out of empty liquor bottles and clouds of smoke. He and Achilles watched it all from their table in the back where they’d comment on whatever they were listening to. Not all of it was half bad, Patroclus realized. He was beginning to appreciate the chaos, the recklessness, words thrown down and collected into shapes of meaning by whomever listened. He liked that. Sometimes he’d close his eyes and imagine grammar textbooks falling apart. When he opened them again Achilles was still beside him, like an idol made of gold. He wanted to put his hand on Achilles’ thigh. He wanted to hold his hand and kiss the tips of his fingers. But he couldn’t here. He couldn’t anywhere, and he knew that, and it hurt. Their meeting against the brick was meant to be secret, but he couldn’t stop wishing that it wasn’t, that somehow, he and Achilles could be like the girls and boys who kissed in parks and theaters and the backs of  cars.

So he wrote about it. He scribbled on napkins, typed till his wrists were hurting. Everything ended up in shreds in a wastebasket. He could not confront his emotions the way the others did. He had never had to. His whole life had been careful and sterile; he had hidden so much, and he had forgotten where to look.

His fingers closed around a crumpled ball of paper, his last reject. He sat on the fire escape and pictured a beautiful high tower, shrouded in clouds, and a prince at the bottom with a leather jacket and a musical laugh.

 

The next Saturday, Achilles leaned in close and whispered against Patroclus’ ear. “Let me drive you home.”

Patroclus smiled despite himself. “Father might not approve.”

“Mmm? Why’s that?”

Patroclus turned and curled his fingers around the lapel of Achilles’ jacket. The cold zipper dug into his skin. “Well, for one, you need to change,” he murmured. He brought his hand to the side of Achilles’ face, brushing away a wave of blonde hair. “And you need a haircut.”

Achilles rested his arm on the back of Patroclus’ chair. “Then will he approve?”

Patroclus’ heart was literally fluttering. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re too bad for me, after all.”

Achilles curled his arm around Patroclus’ shoulders. He was smiling softly. “There’s only one way to find out, Patroclus.”

There was a moment of stillness between them before Achilles stood. Patroclus followed him out to where his car was parked against the curb. As Achilles pulled away, he turned on the radio to that song about love being a many splendored thing. God, Patroclus thought, they’re right.

 

They sat on Patroclus’ fire escape, sharing a joint. Someone in a neighboring apartment was playing jazz, loudly. It was almost midnight.

“Can I ask you something?” Patroclus said. The last deep note of the piano died out beneath him.

“Anything.”

“That guy… your friend, the one you said…”

Achilles exhaled with his head tilted back. Patroclus studied the shape of his lips, the lines of his throat, framed just so by the collar of his white t-shirt. He had an aching in his chest and a sense of foreboding that somehow, this meeting between them would come to have more meaning than he could imagine in this moment. It was a strange feeling, frightening, and he thought that maybe he should stand up and force Achilles to leave, lock the door behind him, forget about it. Maybe he could save them.

But instead, he cupped his hand behind Achilles’ neck and pulled him forward for a kiss.

It was slow and soft. Achilles wrapped an arm around Patroclus’ waist and their foreheads rested against each other.

“You were saying?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“When you say that, it makes it matter more.”

“Well.” Patroclus looked down to where Achilles’ hand rested lightly on the inside of his thigh, the last of the joint between his fingers. “I was going to ask whatever happened to your friend. The one whose poem you read. The one you said you were… with.”

Achilles smiled. “I believe the term I used was fucking.”

“Yes, well, him.”

Achilles kissed the corner of Patroclus’ mouth, then dragged his lips across Patroclus’ cheek to lean into his neck and say, “I only said that to see you blush. It was worth it.”

Patroclus pulled back. The way Achilles was looking at him was beautiful.

“I do not blush.”

“You did. It was adorable. Anyway, when I saw you weren’t going to beat me up for saying that, that’s how I knew.”

Patroclus only laughed, humorlessly. “You’re braver than I am, certainly.”

Achilles shrugged. “Not brave. Stupid. More so than most.”

They fell silent. Patroclus smoked a little more and nodded along to Billie Holiday. Then Achilles asked, “How many other men have there been?”

Patroclus paused. “None.”

Achilles didn’t respond. Patroclus asked, “What about you?”

Another pause. “A few.”

The last few lights in the city windows began to disappear. The moon glowed faintly behind the curtain of clouds. Billie Holiday had been replaced by the burst of an argument, something like falling pots and pans, then silence.

“You aren’t stupid,” Patroclus said.

“What?”

Patroclus turned to him. “You know who you are. And you just live. That’s… that’s beautiful. My father, when he saw that I just wanted to write, that was bad enough. But when I couldn’t even hold a relationship with a girl? I’m nothing to him. Worse than that. I thought, if I couldn’t be something to him, I’d be something to myself. But I’m too afraid to become anything. I can’t – I don’t know how.”

He didn’t know why he had said so much, only that he felt he had needed to say it. It hung like smoke in the air between them. He couldn’t read the expression on Achilles’ face.

Finally, Achilles took Patroclus’ hand and started tracing the shape of it with the tips of his fingers. Patroclus closed his eyes.

“You know,” Achilles whispered, “when you are a very famous writer and I am a very famous actor, living in our beautiful home together, so in love…” His voice trailed off as he raised Patroclus’ hand to lace their fingers together. He was smiling just a little.

Patroclus was enthralled. “What?”

Achilles’ voice had fallen below a whisper, as if he were sharing a secret too big for the night. He leaned forward a little. He said, “We’re never going to be afraid again, Patroclus. I swear to you.”

And Patroclus believed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for the kind feedback ♡ happy new year everyone


	4. Chapter 4

Patroclus let his voice settle over the room and accepted the response with an impassive nod before stepping down to rejoin Achilles. This time he had taken the table closest to the makeshift stage, and the entire time Patroclus read Achilles had looked up at him with pride and love and his radiant smile. Patroclus knew that being in the front of the room meant he couldn’t touch Achilles the way he normally would, but he allowed himself to run his hand over Achilles’ knee under the table.

“How was it?” Achilles asked, grinning as if he would answer anyway.

“Strangely cathartic,” Patroclus answered honestly, fishing out a cigarette. It was a short something that he had written one night after he and Achilles had driven around the city, stopping to look at the skyline from the bridge. He saw a part of himself then, in the lights, the water, Achilles with the comforting weight of his arm around Patroclus’ shoulders, now familiar. Maybe it was momentary sentimentality, but when he sat down to write, he found that he didn’t care. He let Achilles read over his shoulder and afterwards laid him down on the creaky box spring and even now could remember every detail, rough denim removed, then soft skin, firm muscle, breath in his hair, his name being whispered, Achilles moving under him as the crescent moon rolled over in the sky.

 

From then on Patroclus wrote everything. Anger, happiness, sadness, he wrote all of it because all of it was his, his words, his thoughts, no faceless presence there to criticize. He spent whole afternoons just typing, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and the windows open to the city sounds. Achilles was now a constant presence in his life, lounging on the couch or on the bed, shirtless and with messy hair, and Patroclus thought how things could ever have come together to bring Achilles into his world, his apartment, his bed.

He told Achilles this one morning, or afternoon, he wasn’t sure which,  after having read to him from his collection of William Carlos Williams. The smell of Achilles’ weed was still around them, and his body felt radiant from Achilles’ love.

“You don’t believe in fate, Patroclus?”

He considered this. “I don’t think I do, no.”

Achilles looked up at him, his head resting comfortably in Patroclus’ lap. His hair was spread over Patroclus’ thighs and stomach, bright gold over olive.

“You think things just… happen?”

“I can’t tell if you’re disagreeing with me or just playing along. But I don’t like it.” He ran his fingers over the waves of Achilles’ hair, feeling the softness. “What is this about?”

“I’m just asking,” Achilles said, his heart-shaped lips forming the playful smile that Patroclus loved. “Answer the question.” He nudged Patroclus’ ribs.

“I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, what difference does it make, in the end? Things happen and whether they were planned or spontaneous hardly changes the fact that they happened.”

Achilles sat up, leaning forward, the tip of his nose brushing against Patroclus’. “Then let’s make something happen and go somewhere. Just drive in my car. We’ll go everywhere, even. Wherever we want. Think of all the beautiful things you’ll write. And maybe I’ll find some auditions, actually make something of myself.”

Patroclus pressed his hand to Achilles’ chest to push him away, looking fully into his eyes. He loved Achilles’ eyes. “You want to leave here forever?”

“Not forever. Well, maybe. As long as it takes. Let’s just find out while we’re out there.”

“How long have you been thinking about this?”

Achilles grinned. “Forever. Absolutely.”

The natural hesitation Patroclus always felt flared for a moment, but died away as he thought. He didn’t have any commitments, no real job. He could write from anywhere and type up some essays to sell if he had to, a few articles. He had enough money saved for hotel rooms, knowing Achilles wouldn’t care so much about the quality, just as long as they were together. He didn’t consider rationality, because some things weren’t rational, and he was beginning to understand that. What he had with Achilles didn’t fall into any logical pattern, certainly not in the world they lived in. Rhyme and meter, he thought. And he remembered a night not so long ago where Achilles had taken his cigarette and changed his life.

He looked up into the loving eyes in front of him, and he said, “I’ll do it.”

 

Achilles helped him pack. He brought along a few sweaters, his favorite button up shirt, some books, journals, a pen, and his typewriter. Achilles had a bag shoved into the corner of the trunk of his car, which he explained was for emergencies. Patroclus didn’t ask what sort of emergencies. He got into the passenger side, lit a cigarette, and watched Achilles’ hands on the wheel, the trails of veins in his forearms, the roll of white fabric over his bicep, the leather jacket discarded on the back seat. The city was laid out behind them in a brilliant display of tiny yellow lights, and the whole road was before them. He turned on the radio, and as he glanced at Achilles, Achilles looked back. The headlights gleamed off the traffic signs and Achilles’ car cut forward through the night.


End file.
